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Top 10: 2012 games in 2022
Looking back at 2012, ten years later, it seems like a decent year. It wasn’t hard to come up with a top ten. My top 10: 10. Keyflower. This is an exciting mix of weird auctions and worker placement, and the game works rather well with the whole range from two to six players. That…
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, Android: Netrunner, Ghost Blitz, Keyflower, Las Vegas, Le Havre: Inland Port, Lords of Waterdeep, Love Letter, Machi Koro, Merchant of Venus, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Suburbia, Terra Mystica, The Great Zimbabwe, Tzolk’in, War of the Ring -
The Imperial Pearls
I wasn’t sure what to do about the latest Res Arcana expansion, Perlae Imperii. Then I saw it in the local game store and decided – why not! We haven’t played Res Arcana all that much lately, but I suppose the expansion is just the thing to get us back to artefacts, mages and monuments. We…
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Space merchants
Noticing that I didn’t play Merchant of Venus at all in 2021 made me eager to give it a spin. It didn’t take much to convince Nooa, and we played a game last Saturday. Since we’re experts – whopping three plays for both of us – we played to 4000 credits. It took us maybe…
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Trains on an island: 1860
We started the gaming year 2022 with a game of 1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight. When doing my 2021 review, I noticed I didn’t play any 18xx games in 2021, which I wanted to fix in 2022. Better get started with it, then! My game of choice was 1860 because it’s my favourite…
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Gaming Year 2021
Covid-19. The pandemic got better, and I got the vaccine shots. I returned to the board game cafe meetings in June. Things have become much better. The number of games I played dropped significantly from 2020: from 753 to 481. In hours, I went from 339 to 266. The main reason for this is Nooa,…
A Feast for Odin, Abandon All Artichokes, Altiplano, Anno 1800, Attika, Beyond the Sun, Blue Skies, Coconuts, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Decrypto, Europa Tour, Everdell, Fields of Arle, Fort, Hallertau, Hansa Teutonica, Innovation, Just One, Krass Kariert, L.L.A.M.A., Lands of Galzyr, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Love Letter, Machi Koro, Magic: The Gathering, Maglev Metro, Mahjong, Merchant of Venus, Monikers, Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, Orléans, Pax Pamir, Pictures, Res Arcana, Second Chance, Similo, Smartphone Inc., So Clover!, Spirit Island, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, The City, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, The Great Zimbabwe, The Mind, Twin It!, Underwater Cities, UNO, Westphalia -
First impressions: Lost Ruins of Arnak
I’ve been aware of Lost Ruins of Arnak being popular. A friend even offered his copy on loan at one point. I said no, because I wasn’t keen on learning new games, and we were busy playing Anno 1800 and Hallertau anyway. Now, another long-time gaming buddy showered praise on Arnak on an online forum,…
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Great Western Trail, expanded
Alexander Pfister’s masterpiece Great Western Trail is still a rather good game. Last Wednesday, we played it with four players, which was a rare treat for me – I usually only play it as a two-player game. The four-player game is a good experience; the game flows so fast with experienced players, there’s hardly any…
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Uwe Rosenberg farming games
Uwe Rosenberg is a German board game designer with several highly respected titles in his ludography. If there’s a designer whose work I adore, Rosenberg is that. He has designed many games, but I’m particularly interested in his work around the farming theme and worker placement mechanism, starting from Agricola in 2007. This ignores his…
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The best teas to drink with Fields of Arle: Tea & Trade
Fields of Arle Fields of Arle is one of the best titles in the Uwe Rosenberg ludography. I’ve found Rosenberg’s games are often best with two players; in many cases, extra players just lengthen the game without offering much. Here, the player count is capped at two. Fields of Arle isn’t a tricky game. It…